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The strength of the book is its breadth. It's pretty much a Swiss Army Knife book. You could literally start with only a little knowledge of UNIX (or multi-user OSs) and build a rather complete server to host all kinds of services for a web site, or a local network using this book. (I recommend you DO build a hobby server to try out some of the examples in the book.)

There are several glaring problems, though. The biggest being technical errors strewn throughout the text. If you're entirely new to UNIX, you'll probably run into a few problems if you type in the commands exactly as listed. I'm a technical editor myself, so my "edit daemons" are always running in the background and pointing out problems while I read anything. I would say that the book has no less than 20 errors (either in command statements or technical theory) that are large enough to cause you problems if you're not sure what you're doing. Be careful when you're reading and if something looks a little odd, it probably is, so look it up somewhere else.

I would also say that it would have been nice to see some of the examples on the CDs that were promised in the text. (My CD-ROMs came with FreeBSD 4.5 RELEASE and FreeBSD 5.0 CURRENT.) The "phantom references" to the section on periodical service configuration would have been nice to see.

If you use or plan on using FreeBSD, either as a production-grade server or a stand-alone workstation, this book should be on your shelf. This either means that the book is really useful in spite of its problems, or that there just isn't enough choices when it comes to up-to-date books on the coolest OS out there: FreeBSD. (Help me, O'Reilly.)

The book suffers from three major weaknesses. First, my 'First Printing, August 2001' edition contained typos on pages 357, 358, 363, 364, 378, 435, 730, and others. FreeBSD newbies may not always recognize these mistakes. Second, the book makes numerous references to scripts on an accompanying CD-ROM, but the discs sold with the volume only offer FreeBSD 4.4 RELEASE and FreeBSD 5.0 CURRENT. I could not find the missing scripts at the publisher's web site, either. Third, several sections refer to missing content. For example, chapter 14 apparently should have contained guidance on automating processes using 'periodic'. It's difficult to implement later recommendations that cite this missing documentation, such as pages 426-7.

Beyond these three flaws, the book does not suit its intended 'Intermediate-Advanced' audience. The material appears to be aimed at users trying to migrate away from Windows or perhaps Linux. 'Intermediate-Advanced' users do not need lessons on fundamentals of networking like hardware and protocols. I was also frustrated by the inclusion of a chapter on 'Perl Programming' which was too vague to be helpful. If the authors couldn't do anything useful with the 23 pages allotted to the topic, the chapter should have been dropped. (In contrast, I found the shell scripting chapter more practical.)

I really hoped to give this book a glowing review. My company's FreeBSD servers routinely exceed 100-plus days of uptime, and I believe the OS is an incredible platform for servers. While I found sections of "FreeBSD Unleashed" useful, they were not sufficient to make me overlook the book's weaknesses. Strangely enough, it's probably still a good idea to buy this book if you're a FreeBSD system administrator. It's important to collect and support documentation for this robust, powerful OS. Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for the book that does it justice ...

The only other book out there of this quality is "Absolute BSD" by No-Starch Press. However, that one has a few misprints in the Crontab section that can be confusing.

This book gives straighforward explanations of various aspects of running FreeBSD. I liked its section on firewalls, for example, more than I did the Handbook's section. It's a good reference to have around.

This book seems the perfect bridge between Ms. Anderson's and Mr. Lehey's.

I've only been using FreeBSD for 3 months (I'm a old hat MCSE, CCNA) and I use 4 resources for 99% of what I learn ...I've looked at all the other FBSD books, none compair to the wide array of info here.

For all those who have heard about FreeBSD and desire to start from scratch (i.e. moving from Windows), you'll need all the help you can get: you'll have to look for the Complete FreeBSD book, the Handbook (printed or online) and will be surfing the FreeBSD man pages after the instalation... and then you'll have to use your own creativity imagination and all the internet search engines available to understand and implement this beautiful OS. But the results are excellent, the stability and security that FreeBSD offers are outstanding.

FreeBSD Unleashed is certainly a book which has many updated information and shares many common points with the books mentioned above, however, all of them complement each other. I certainly recommend this book for everyone who needs a good reference book for FreeBSD and already owns the others mentioned.

Good Luck!

I was particularly pleased with the book's sections on common *nix applications such as Gnome and Samba. I found it significantly more comprehensible than the Linux books I've used. Highly recommended.

I recommend this book to help you get an installation done. Its also great for becoming dangerous. As with any computer book, it can't teach you everything or purport to provide every solution to your specific problems.

You will get a good understanding of FreeBSD from this book. You will not become a system administrator by reading this book.

The book jumps around, and there does not seem to be a good cronological structure for the book.

I've read it front to back more than twice, still learning new and interesting information. If anything it utterly inspired me into loving FreeBSD, something other books have not done at all.

I have bought another copy of this book for my internet company as a resource to have around the office for general FreeBSD questions.

Staff are fighting over the copy, and the book can be found on the desk of my administrator, to my business partner who does not know much about UNIX and finds the book very helpful as a reference.

Books like these really help move the FreeBSD community forward into the 21st century.